William Blackwood and Sons first edition - 1897
Dariel was first serialised in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1896 to October 1897, before being published in the latter year. It was the only one of his novels which was first published in one volume. The novel contains 14 illustrations by Miss Chris Hammond, which were criticised for being rather 'flat' and lacking in movement. The novel itself received mixed reviews (no change there for the Author). The Spectator complained that Mr. Blackmore's method is too leisurely, and his canvas is crowded with characters who, though very engaging in themselves, retard the march of the story. The problem was that, whereas the author had not changed his style, the late 1890s's reader was very different from that of thirty, even twenty, years' earlier. The Publisher, at any rate, thought highly of the book: unquestionably the most important contribution made to fiction this year...the love element is singularly fresh and delightful...the characters are alive in every fibre, and there are scores of those wonderful descriptions of nature in which Mr. Blackmore has no existing peer save Mr. Hardy or Mr. Meredith. A more measured appraisal puts the novel somewhere in between these comments. It is slow to get going and the pace is leisurely, but the characters and descriptions of nature are of Blackmore's usual high standard.
Perhaps the novel's subtitle - A Romance of Surrey - disguises the fact that the last 123 pages are set in middle Europe and the far-off Caucasian mountains. In fact, the English setting could have been equally placed in several counties surrounding Surrey. The romantic element is only accidentally connected with England, where a noble Lesghian chief, Sur Imar, was exiled from the Caucasus as a result of a blood feud. He has taken refuge with his only daughter, Dariel - a girl of surpassing loveliness and, through her deceased mother, heiress to the throne of Georgia. The first person narrator of the tale, 26 year-old George Cranleigh - an athletic young gentleman-farmer, the son of an impoverished Baronet ruined, according to the author by the "farce of Free-trade", falls in love at first sight with Dariel - so much so that he leaves all at home to go on a quixotic expedition to the Caucasus to save her and her father. His subsequent adventures among Ossetian cut-throats, led by the evil sister of Sur Imar, the Osset Queen Marva, leads to a daring raid (akin to Indiana Jones) and ends with a fractured skull from the Ossets' clubs. His bravery is ultimately rewarded with the hand of the lovely Dariel.
Does all this work as a novel? One could argue that the author spends far too long in getting to the Caucasus; the rural idyll of Surrey and the rugged landscape of the latter don't really jell (in a way, they are not meant to). The mixture of melodrama and idyll is hard to pull off. However, the introduction of what is a romantic tribe, who seemingly trace their origin to the Red Cross Knights of the Crusades. is compelling. Chapters XXII-XXVII, where Sur Imar tells George the story of his life and exile, drag rather, even though they are integral to the overall tale. What Imar's narration does do is to bind George to the family even more closely: Here was a man who never knew what fear was, suspicion, falsehood, meanness, envy, or even the love of money...it seemed to me that if ever there had lived a man of honour and kind heart, who deserved the favour of Heaven and the reverence of his fellows, it was this man long oppressed by some mysterious curse of destiny. And he had a lovely daughter.
The sub plot of George Cranleigh's sister, Grace, being wooed and falling for the wealthy nouveau riche stockbroker, Jackson Stoneman, who has taken over the Cranleigh estate, is poetic. But the narrator, George, is too stolid and self effacing for my liking. Salt of the earth, maybe; a right little Surrey John Bull; dull, although to be saluted for his fortitude both in England and the Caucasus. His very odd brother, Harold, flits his way across two or three scenes, but adds little to the point of the tale. Dariel, however, is quite another matter. Chapter I is entitled A Nightingale and it is as early as page 6 that George meets his beloved: the silvery light of the west fell upon the face of a kneeling maiden. The profile, as perfect as that of a statue, yet with the tender curves of youth, more like the softness of a cameo...I thought that I had never heard any music like her voice, nor read any poetry to be compared to the brilliant depths of her expressive eyes. George's wooing of her is tenderly done and very natural. And they deserve each other in the end: I felt myself all right again. The strength that had been shattered by big Osset clubs, and long prostration, lonely wanderings of bloodless brain, feeble doubts of woman's truth, all flowed back, and filled my heart and life with the joy of this great love.
The author has lost none is his descriptive powers. Here he is on a ferocious local bulldog:
...of all the bull-dogs I have ever seen, this Grab was the least urbane and polished. A white beast with three grisly patches destroying all candour of even blood-thirstiness, red eyes leering with treacherous ill-will, hideous nostrils, like ulcers cut off, and enormous jowls sagging from the stark white fangs. He saw that I disliked him, and a hearty desire to feel his tusks meet in my throat was displayed in the lift of his lips, and the gleam of his eyes.
And a walk in the Surrey countryside:
It was a bright autumnal afternoon, after a touch of white frost, and against the sky every here and there some bronzy leaf would swing and glisten like the pendulum of a clock at winding time. But most of the foliage now had finished its career of flaunt and flutter, and was lying at our feet in soft brown strewage, or pricking its last crispage up, where a blade of grass supported it...how pleasant it was to see afar the wavering sweeps of gentle hill, and plaits of rich embosomed valley, with copse, and turnip-field, and furzy common patched with shadow. It made me bless the Lord at heart for casting my lines in a quiet land, where a man beholds no craggy menace, black rush of blind tempests, bottomless gulfs, unfathomed forests, and peaks that would freeze him into stone. For the people that live there must be in a wild condition always...Welcome to the Caucasus!
There is an interesting aside on another contemporary writer: Who is the most delightful writer of our race, since Heaven took Shakespeare away in hot haste? The answer, although so long in coming, comes louder, as every year adds to the echo - "William Makepeace Thackeray". That man of vast brain, with the fresh heart of a child... (and I have never read any of his works!)
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